Iran issues new death sentences
IRAN issued a series of death sentences as women-led protests over Mahsa Amini’s death in custody entered a third month yesterday, with clashes overnight leaving at least six people dead.
Street violence raged across Iran as protests sparked by the September 16 death of Amini intensified on the anniversary of a lethal 2019 crackdown.
Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman of Kurdish origin, died in the custody of the notorious morality police after her arrest for an alleged breach of Iran’s strict dress code for women.
“We’ll fight! We’ll die! We’ll take back Iran!” dozens of protesters could be heard chanting around a bonfire on a Tehran street, in a video published by the 1500tasvir social media monitor.
Security forces appear to open fire on dozens of commuters at a Tehran metro station. Another verified video showed members of the security forces attacking women without hijab headscarves on an underground train.
Organisers of the protests have called for three days of actions to commemorate hundreds killed in the “Bloody Aban”, or Bloody November, demonstrations that erupted on November 15, 2019 after a shock decision to hike fuel prices. Iran has struggled to contain the protests, which have seen women burn headscarves and face off with the security forces.
State media said “rioters” killed two members of the Revolutionary Guards and a member of its Basij paramilitary force on Tuesday. Guards Colonel Reza Almasi was shot dead in Bukan, a city in Amini’s home province of Kurdistan, and another Guards member, Reza Azabar, was gunned down in Kamyaran, a Kurdish majority city in West Azerbaijan province, the official IRNA news agency reported. The Basij member died after being hit by a Molotov cocktail in the southern city of Shiraz.
Three protesters have been killed, two in Sanandaj and one in Kamyaran, by direct fire from government forces, Oslo-based rights group Hengaw said.
Tensions were high yesterday in Kamyaran for the funeral of mobile phone repair shop owner Fuad Mohammadi, one of the three who Hengaw said was killed by the security forces.
Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said security forces had killed at least 326 people, including 43 children and 25 women, in the crackdown on the Amini protests. At least 15 000 people have been arrested, a figure the Iranian authorities deny.
The judiciary said yesterday a court handed down three more death sentences over the “riots”. One was convicted of attacking police officers with his car, killing one of them, the second had stabbed a security officer, and the third tried to block traffic, the judiciary said. It came after a second death sentence was issued late on Tuesday, two days after a court issued the first death sentence in connection with the protest movement. Five others have been sentenced to prison terms of between five and 10 years.